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Heavenly Mountain Road – by Cameron Morse

We can so easily … find that we are trapped, as in a dreamand die there, without ever waking up – Rainer Maria Rilke

In a factory park on the outskirtsof Yantai, I used to walk around talkingto God: Father, who art in heaven.

And you, my earthly father, I used towalk along Heavenly Mountain Roadwith you, talking to the charcoal sky,

the windbreaks, the dark wintertide. Like Rilke, I used to fearI wasn’t really living, and on the night

of my first seizure, I knew I had to dieto bring you back, but I weary of waiting:If you aren’t coming, I will take

your place at the kitchen counter, pickpaper jackets off your cloves of garlic.I will slice onion under running

water and scoop out the seeds of bakedspaghetti squash. I will feedyour family in your stead.

I will feed your godforsaken children.

Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. Diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2014, he is currently a third-year MFA candidate at UMKC and lives with his wife, Lili, and newborn son Theodore Ian in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection Fall Risk is published byGlass Lyre Press.